Jamie Speight blasts Mickey Coveney; wants victory to spur him on to British title tilt

JAMIE SPEIGHT has a new opponent for his Southern Area title fight – but the super-featherweight can’t seem to forget about Mickey Coveney.

“He pulled out on me two weeks prior to the fight with diarrhoea, which I find a pitiful excuse,” says the 23-year-old (10-2) from Kingsteignton, Devon, who will now battle Norfolk’s Scott Moises (3-4) at the Guildhall, Plymouth, on Saturday.

“Mickey has won titles and when you are at that level you shouldn’t be pulling out of fights for those reasons.

“It would be a 48-hour thing, maybe three days at most. You lose a bit of fluid but you can get all of your fluids and salts back.

“And of course for the last ten weeks I have put everything into preparing for a 5ft 3ins southpaw, but now I have a 6ft tall orthodox fighter who has replaced him.

“It did put a spanner into the works but Moises is going to bleed just like everybody else.

“I don’t know if he is the tallest super-featherweight in Europe, although he is a completely different fighter than Coveney – but I am a versatile boxer.

“It’s been one of the best camps I have ever had. I believe my career is an open book and I think I can write my own story.”

Victory against Moises could herald greater things for Speight, with adviser Jonathan Hope claiming there are big things being lined up for the young charge.

Speight, a scaffolder by trade, turned fully professional at the beginning of this year which has changed his outlook on the game, although he admits it’s hard going.

“Sometimes I feel like ‘fucking hell, this is hard’,” he admits. “All these people who aren’t full time pros, who think they have it hard, until they turn pro they don’t know what it’s like.

“It was easier when I was a scaffolder who trained part-time. Now I am full-time, I have so many different things to do. The strength and conditioning is so different.

“The way I look at it, whether you are a chippie, a scaffolder or a boxer, the more you work with your tools then the more efficient you are with them.

“I am 23 and I’m not getting any younger. I feel I can win British titles and beyond.

“In my eyes I have the ability to beat people at super featherweight, I just need someone to open the door.”

Speight has not fought since October 14 last year when Grimsby’s Kevin Hooper out-pointed him over 10 rounds to claim the British Masters Lightweight title, a fight in which the Devon boxer was hampered by injuries sustained at the end of the second round.

“Kev is a neat boxer but he knows only one style. I take nothing away from him, he was the better man on the night, but in round two he didn’t know what was happening,” says Speight, who has become good friends with Hooper since the fight.

“I was catching him with shots from all angles and even his trainer, Sean Wood, looked worried.

“But my ankle went at the end of the second round and after that he could hit me with shots. I snapped all of my ligament in my right foot and tore all the tendons clean off the bones.

“I didn’t know that until I went to the hospital.

“In round three we had a clash of heads and I got a massive gash above my eye, so from then onwards I had to protect my eye.

“The one thing I learned from that fight was how to survive. And now I’m going to go on and claim the southern area title, before stepping up. I want the Commonwealth title and the British title and I want one of them this year.”